Eco-sustainable? Off-corso

Nowadays eco-sustainability is a very important and concerning subject. Everyday we are kept on alert by the media and their worrying news about dangers deriving from the traditional exploitation of our ecosystem that in 2050 will become unsustainable.

Trading, finance, diet, architecture, fashion, and tourism: by then, eco-sustainability, a concept between fashion and life philosophy, involves every human aspect. This concept arises anxieties and catastrophic post-industrial concerns, but also the hope in feasible development opportunities new materials, technologies, resources and policies can represent. For instance, the world’s first sustainable dance club, Off Corso , in Rotterdam , the Netherlands , is powered by dancing: Springs beneath the floor capture motion energy to be converted into electricity.

The club  presented last 14 th October by the Dutch section of the movement Critical Mass  is a cooperative project between Enviu, an international organization promoting sustainable entrepreneurship and Döll-Atelier voor Bouwkunst , a Dutch architecture firm, which developed the technology. This club is aimed at “connecting enjoyment & lifestyle to the brand new ecological sustainability ideas”, i.e. responsible enjoyment. This represents a clever and ironical way to take advantage of our energies.

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The dance floor is suspended on sophisticated crystals that produce piezoelectric energy if compressed. Impulses are thus conveyed toward a generator that covers all requirements of the club. Space interacts with hosts too through the walls changing their colour according to temperature. The scheduling is very appealing too, there are clubbing and cultural-digital exhibition such for example the Dutch version of the well-known Resfest .

For instance in The UK, Clair Price, director of the Facility Architect , in collaboration with the Hull University , is projecting a chair to harvest human vibrations. This project, according to the Architect, is aimed at “convert at least 50% of 6/8 watts generated by every person on a chair”. Furthermore, until the end of this year Facillity Architect will present the outcomes of engineer Jim Gilbert’s project. He wants to fit some underground station floors with heel-strike generations to harvest the energy from people walking across it. This power output will then be wired back to provide the lighting within that building. So the 34,000 commuters who pass through Victoria underground station at rush hour, for example, could theoretically generate enough energy to power 6,500 LED light fittings.

Feasible projects and science-fictions visions men like non-stop energetic supplies. Did you imagine your future like this?.